K-Pop Group Made of Americans Mercilessly Roasted Online

The all-American “K-Pop” group EXP Edition is off to a rough start. Again.

After immediately raising eyebrows when they first emerged two years ago, the group went on a hiatus from the limelight to work on developing their career. The group, which raised over $30,000 on Kickstarter to fund their mini-album, has since slimmed down from six to just four members: Frankie, Šime, Hunter and Koki.

They all moved to South Korea to prepare for a relaunch, and after two years of studying Korean, rehearsing dance and song numbers and recording, the group from New York has finally re-emerged to release a teaser trailer for their upcoming Korean-language song “Feel Like This” on YouTube.

So far, it seems K-Pop fans are not impressed.

With more down votes than up, the teaser has earned a massive amount of outrage and ridicule in the comments section.

But while it appears that an overwhelming majority of K-Pop fans have already pronounced the group DOA even before their latest song is actually released, there are still other netizens who prefer to give the group a chance to do their thing. According to PopCrush, some of them point out to other non-Asians who have made it in the K-Pop industry.

“Its funny how ya all hatin coz they’re white, but at the same time you were happy when Alex debuted w/ RaNia. Who’s racist now?.. (I don’t care if you’re white, black or blue, kpop is asian, so let it be asian),” reasoned one netizen.

K-Pop Shoebox echoed the sentiment, listing down other non-Koreans in the industry:

“People dissing them for not being Korean. LOL. f(x) Amber, Super Junior Henry, Cosmic Girls Cheng Xiao, Fiestar Cao Lu, TWICE Momo, Tzuyu, Sana, GOT7 Jackson, Bam Bam, Seventeen The8, f(x) Victoria, EXO Lay, FREAKING ALEX FROM RANIA. You all have a problem with them being white, not with them being non Korean, cause otherwise you would be against all the people I just named, too. If you’re dissing, at least diss right.”